
Class I O i 4-3. 



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EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO 

PROFESSOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 
TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 



THE PROBLEM OF 
VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 



BY 

DAVID SNEDDEN, Ph.D. 

COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION FOR MASSACHUSETTS 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

BOSTON, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 

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COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



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INTRODUCTION 

It is life which trains men — life abounding in 
deeds and thoughts, among men and things. 
Wherever there is vital interaction between a 
mind and its world there is real education. Edu- 
cative power is, thus, broadly distributed. Its 
centres of influence are the social institutions 
— school, home, church, vocation, and neighbor- 
hood life. Together they bear the total work of 
training men, with all the economy and efficiency 
which comes through a division of labor. In pro- 
portion to the relative strength and weakness of 
their structures, they supplement and reinforce 
one another. 

This distribution of educative power among 
the social institutions is by no means a fixed 
division of burdens, set once and for all by tradi- 
tion or reason. The needs of society lay their 
heavy demands now upon one agent, now upon 
another. And in the shifting currents of social 
progress, some institutions once powerful are left 
weakened, if not helpless, while other institutions 
wax strong to meet the demands of the time. 
The homes of the urban industrial classes have 

iii . 



INTRODUCTION 

not the moral influence over children exercised 
by the family life of the farmer ; the church grips 
fewer members with its theological doctrines 
than it did a century ago ; the trades do less for 
their apprentices in the modern factory than they 
did when lodged in the household; the press 
has more influence ; libraries are more plentiful ; 
and the school has grown to be a modern giant 
where once it was a puny babe. The same old 
institutional forces beat upon the nervous sys- 
tems of men, but the relative distribution of their 
work has changed, and is changing. 

In all these variations of influence, one strik- 
ing tendency stands out clearly : As the agencies 
for incidental and informal education become in- 
capable of training men for their complex en- 
vironment, society, becoming increasingly self- 
conscious, gathers up the neglected functions and 
assigns them to the school, the one institution 
entirely under its control. As church and family 
life ceases to keep pace with the moral demands 
of our intricate social life, the problem of moral 
education becomes conspicuous in the schools. 
As the work and play of children, under the con- 
ditions of city life, become restricted so as to 
deprive them of robust physical activities in the 
fresh air and sunshine, the school is called upon 

iv 



INTRODUCTION 

to combat the danger with systematic physical 
training. As factory and shop employment be- 
comes specialized and scientific, and the system 
of apprenticeship fails to make good workmen, 
the obligation to train efficient employees is 
thrust upon the schools. 

Just now the shifting of vocational education 
from the field of industry to the school is the 
crucial problem of our school organization. The 
schoolmaster is confronted with the task of 
dealing with a problem alien to his experiences 
and contrary to his traditions. Our schools have 
always been dominantly cultural in their aims, 
but the new vocational training must be prac- 
tical. The old education, in order to maintain 
national solidarity, dealt with a common stock 
of facts, habits, and ideals necessary to all men ; 
the newer type of training, which is to supple- 
ment this traditional culture, is as variable and 
as specialized as men's occupations. 

A thousand difficult questions are raised that 
school tradition cannot answer. The schoolmas- 
ter must grope for his solutions in the few estab- 
lished facts of his new case and build new 
methods, which will often be radical departures 
from all that his conservative mind has known 
and revered in scholastic standards. In accept- 



INTRODUCTION 

ing responsibility for the vocational training of 
American children, the school plunges itself into 
a period of transition, in which old ideals are futile 
and new ideals but half -discovered. Clear think- 
ing, the great need of the moment, is obscured 
by the controversies that inevitably arise when 
two sets of traditions, born of two separate in- 
stitutions, are suddenly thrust together in a con- 
flict which dulls tolerance, increases vehemence, 
and destroys poise. Only slowly, and under care- 
ful leadership, are the fundamental lines of solu- 
tion laid bare. 

Already, however, the fundamental principles 
that must guide us in the organization of voca- 
tional education have been revealed. A broad 
social point of view, more inclusive than the nar- 
rower visions of either the traditional schoolmaster 
or the industrial leader, tempers local traditions, 
reconciles opposition, and constructs new poli- 
cies. A close study of experience at home and 
abroad in the matter of industrial training is con- 
cretely suggestive of what can and cannot be 
done in the domain of organization and teaching 
method. Such a measure of our educational ex- 
perience in vocational training, as may be con- 
servatively presented at the present time, is here 
outlined, with suggestive interpretations and 

vi 



INTRODUCTION 

clarifications of the necessary terminology. It is 
offered in the faith that it will be of practical 
assistance in leading both the public and the 
professional mind into safe channels of thought 
and action. 



THE PROBLEM OF 
VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

Some General Distinctions 

If we consider the educative process broadly, we 
discover that a variety of agencies contribute 
to it. Under ordinary circumstances, the child 
learns writing in the school, language in the home, 
religious ideas in the church, games on the play- 
ground, and practical skill in the workshop. The 
theatre, the newspaper, and the club also con- 
tribute to his stock of knowledge, ideals, and 
habits. Within limits, the educative function of 
these various institutions is specialized. In the 
home, the child acquires the fundamentals of 
moral training, as well as a variety of physical 
habits and accomplishments. The home being 
woman's chief workshop, the girl acquires there 
'also the knowledge and skill that make for her 
eventual vocational efficiency. Some homes also 
contribute the manners, interests, tastes, and 
knowledge that we call culture. In the workshop 
or on the farm, the boy ordinarily acquires the 
kind of education that eventually fits him to earn 

i 



THE PROBLEM OF 

a livelihood, to be a producer. The school gives 
its share of education in the school arts (reading, 
writing, number, drawing, etc.), and the begin- 
nings of literature, history, and science, as ele- 
ments of culture. The playground gives not only 
skill and means of physical development, but on 
it are developed a variety of the habits and atti- 
tudes which are moral or social in their nature. 
The newspaper, library, and the stage give not 
only a range of knowledge, good or bad, but also 
contribute to the unfoldment of vocational and 
social ideals and appreciations. 

A further examination of the entire educative 
process will show that, as developed by each of 
the above agencies, it varies largely in degrees 
of purposivenessand artificiality. The child learns 
the family language through the simple and easy 
exercise of the instincts of imitation; the begin- 
nings of vernacular language require no salaried 
teacher. On the other hand, the teaching of 
Greek requires specially trained teachers, and a 
conscious adaptation of means to ends ; it pre- 
sents the aspects of an artificial and regulated 
process. The normal child on the playground, 
with no oversight, and no artificial direction, ac- 
quires a wide range of powers and knowledge ; 
but special instruction and appliances are neces- 

2 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

sary to teach military drill or various forms of 
gymnastics. The teaching of reading is a pro- 
cess requiring usually much skill and conscious 
method ; but once the mechanics are acquired, 
the growth of reading habits and the acquisition 
of knowledge in this field may proceed to a certain 
extent without teachers in an environment of 
books and newspapers. The boy on the farm 
acquires many forms of vocational skill with prac- 
tically no conscious or purposive teaching ; but 
the metal-worker's art, and the engineer's know- 
ledge require careful and expensive education of 
an artificially organized kind. We thus see that 
a consideration of the educative process in any 
field requires that we consider the learning which 
is possible without expensive and purposive ad- 
justments (unorganized education), and that which 
in greater or less degree demands them (organized 
education). 

Again we may consider the entire educative 
process from the standpoint of the various ends 
or purposes which may be kept in view in select- 
ing and appraising means and methods. All 
ordinary education readily lends itself to a four- 
fold division in this connection, (a) There is the 
kind of education whose chief aim is to produce 
and preserve bodily efficiency, such as health, 

3 



THE PROBLEM OF 

strength, and working power. This we call broadly, 
physical education, (b) Next is the kind of edu- 
cation whose chief aim is to promote the capacity 
to earn a living, or, expressed in more social terms, 
the capacity to do one's share of the productive 
work of the world, (c) A third form of education 
is that designed primarily to fit the individual 
to live among his fellows. Religious education, 
moral instruction, and training in civics contribute 
to this end. (d) There is furthermore the kind of 
education that aims to develop intellectual and 
aesthetic capacities, apart from any practical use 
to which these may be put. This education is 
frequently designated by the term "cultural," 
but in a somewhat special sense of that word. 
The two last divisions, which contribute respec- 
tively to the improvement of social life and to the 
development of personal culture, will in this dis- 
cussion be grouped together under the general 
designation, "liberal education." That education 
whose chief aim is to fit for productive capacity 
will be designated as "vocational." 

What is Liberal Education f 

Historically speaking, a liberal education is 
that which aims to broaden the intellectual and 
emotional horizon of the individual, and espe- 

4 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

daily in those fields that are not involved in the 
earning of a livelihood. Schools of liberal arts 
have always sought to remove youths for some 
time from the pressing necessities of practical 
life, and to open up to them the traditions, 
sciences, and arts which are part of the common 
heritage. We commonly associate the idea of 
liberal education with leisure, because some lei- 
sure is and has been necessary to its acquisition, 
and in the leisure periods of life liberal education 
finds its greatest opportunities for expression 
and application. It is the aim of liberal educa- 
tion to give mastery of those arts — reading, 
writing, number, drawing — which constitute the 
open doors to the world's stock of knowledge 
and ideals ; and to add the beginnings of those 
studies — history, literature, science, art — which 
contribute to the enlightenment and enlarge- 
ment of the individual, for the purpose both of 
personal gratification and enjoyment, and of 
giving him the outlook, the ideals, and the know- 
ledge which render him a better member of the 
social group to which he belongs. 

Liberal education may be interpreted as that 
which concerns itself with the consuming, as op- 
posed to the productive processes in life. Each 
individual uses in greater or less degree, accord- 

5 



THE PROBLEM OF 

ing to his cultivation and social capacity, the 
world's stock of literature, history, music, art, 
science, and human associations, as well as the 
embodiments of these in more material forms. 
It is the function of liberal education to teach 
persons how to use or consume to the best indi- 
vidual or social advantage the work of others. 
Liberal education is not primarily concerned with 
the making of the efficient producer, although it 
makes important indirect contributions to that 
end; but it is vocational education which aims 
to train the producer as such, and it looks pri- 
marily towards specialization. It has, as will be 
shown later, its own pedagogy ; and its methods 
may even be in opposition to those of liberal edu- 
cation. 

Those teachers and leaders, who have de- 
veloped for the world its systems of liberal edu- 
cation, have often felt obliged to preach a certain 
unworldliness to their disciples. To them, as to 
the religious devotees of all ages, the practical 
affairs of life were apt to be associated with 
something that was common and vulgar. The 
schoolmaster of the past not only was not a prac- 
tical man, but, to a certain extent, his success in 
his work depended upon his contempt for things 
practical. It was his mission to uphold the de- 

6 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

sirability of those activities which are not con- 
nected with bread-winning, and which, at least 
from a short-sighted point of view, are even in 
opposition to it. The home and the shop, where 
the practical affairs of life controlled, were always 
calling the schoolmaster's followers away from 
him ; consequently, in time he grew to distrust 
them, and naturally to undervalue their part in 
the integral process of the development of the 
individual. 

In these later days, we have learned more 
about the psychological side of liberal education. 
We have discovered that, so far as large numbers 
of individuals are concerned, the truest form of 
liberal education does not consist in dealing with 
those things which are most remote from the 
practical affairs of daily life. But it nevertheless 
remains true that there lingers a considerable 
hostility, on the part of those who promote liberal 
education, to that teaching and those activities 
which are controlled by the obvious necessity of 
contributing to the world's practical work. A 
man may not be trained as a bookkeeper, or a 
machinist, or a farmer, at the same time that he 
is learning to be a student and lover of music. 
For him who would indulge in the pleasures of 
literature, time must be set apart from the prac- 

7 



THE PROBLEM OF 

tical affairs of life. Too early devotion to bread- 
winning occupations, even as a learner, may 
deprive the boy or girl of the opportunities to 
open doors of science, art, literature, history, and 
social knowledge. Consequently, we may affirm 
that not only does the schoolmaster still inherit 
an opposition to vocational education, but within 
limits, his opposition is justified by the fact that 
liberal education and vocational education repre- 
sent somewhat different aims, and, historically 
speaking, involve different systems of pedagogy. 
As will be shown later, each contributes some- 
what to the other; but in spite of the demands of 
the practical man, the world needs more, rather 
than less, of liberal education, provided it does not 
close the door to ultimate vocational efficiency. 

What is Vocational Education f 

In vocational education, the choice of materials 
and methods is primarily determined by the ne- 
cessities of some of the numerous callings or 
groups of related callings, into which the workers 
of the world have divided themselves. That vo- 
cational education which is specialized to the pre- 
paration of lawyers, physicians, and teachers, we 
call professional ; that which is designed to train 
the bookkeeper, clerk, stenographer, or commer- 

8 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

cial traveler, including business leadership, we 
call commercial ; that which is organized with ref- 
erence to the needs of the bricklayer, the machin- 
ist, the shoemaker, the metal-worker, the fac- 
tory hand, and the higher manufacturing pursuits, 
we call industrial education ; that which conveys 
skill and knowledge looking to the tillage of the 
soil and the management of domestic animals, we 
call agricultural ; and that which teaches the girl 
dressmaking, cooking, and management of the 
home, we call education in the household arts. 

In some form or other, vocational education is 
older than liberal education, for the simple reason 
that men have always had to have occupations 
involving more or less skill, by which they could 
earn a livelihood. In the primitive wilderness, 
the boy followed his father in hunting and fish- 
ing and, in time, by processes of imitation and 
suggestion, coupled with the learning which comes 
from trial and error, he became himself a fairly 
efficient hunter or fisherman. At the same time, 
the girl was at work with her mother, acquiring 
the simple arts of preparing food, dressing skins, 
and tilling the soil, which were the woman's con- 
tributions to the necessary work of the time. By 
and by, some of the arts became highly complex, 
and the processes of transmitting them from 

9 



THE PROBLEM OF 

father to son necessitated better organization. 
There grew up in the ancient crafts the system 
of apprenticeship, which directed and organized 
the efforts of the young learner. The apprentice- 
ship system, as inherited by certain of the great 
vocations of the Middle Ages, was undoubtedly 
the most perfect system of vocational education 
that the world has ever seen. 

From what has been said, it is obvious that 
other agencies than schools have long been re- 
sponsible for vocational education. The home 
was the first great instrumentality to this end. 
This was supplemented and, at times, succeeded 
by the systems of apprenticeship which have been 
mainly carried out, under the sanction of the law, 
by private or philanthropic agencies. Society has 
always recognized the very great necessity of 
some form of vocational education, but both the 
interests and capacities of those concerned have 
commonly made it possible to dispense with State 
control and support of it. Private and philan- 
thropic agencies have usually been sufficient. 

It is true that certain of the higher vocations 
have long been acquired under school condi- 
tions and, not infrequently, at public expense. 
The mediaeval universities had their professional 
schools of law, medicine, and theology. The mili- 

10 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

tary education of leaders was long ago made a 
national obligation. Not a small part of the pre- 
paration of architects, artists, and, sometimes, 
literary leaders, has been deliberately assumed 
by governing bodies. In America, where private 
and philanthropic effort was not sufficient, even 
the national government has assisted in the found- 
ing of schools of agriculture and engineering — 
essentially schools of higher vocational education. 
Three fourths of a century ago, Massachusetts 
began to prepare at public expense teachers for 
the public schools, — a special form of vocational 
education. In all these instances, the State has 
stepped in to supply a well-defined need in fields 
where private effort did not suffice. The State 
did not do this for the sake of the individuals 
who were to be educated, but in its own inter- 
est, inasmuch as it greatly needed these highly 
trained leaders. 

But in another field, society early found public 
action necessary for the development of vocational 
education. There are those unfortunates — de- 
linquents, dependents, and defectives — for whom 
the home no longer exists, or for whom the home 
is a wholly insufficient instrument of education. 
First under philanthropy, and then under State 
action, schools arose for the purpose of giving 

ii 



THE PROBLEM OF 

what was conceived to be the necessary educa- 
tion for these classes. But liberal education was 
soon found to be inadequate, because it left the 
individual unprepared for the practical affairs of 
life : so in almost all cases, institutions attempt- 
ing the education of the orphan, the cripple, the 
deaf, the blind, and the young delinquent, have 
found it necessary to evolve vocational education. 
These institutions have done a remarkable amount 
of experimenting, and the results of their efforts, 
inadequate though they yet be, are worthy of pro- 
found study on the part of all who are interested 
in the general theory of vocational education. 

In another field, vocational education under 
school conditions has justified itself. At the 
close of the Civil War, the social life and organi- 
zation of the negro people of the South were 
in a badly disorganized condition. Family rela- 
tionships had been much impaired, and were 
frequently non-existent. In other words, the 
home as an agency of education, vocational or 
otherwise, was unable to perform its customary 
functions. Apprenticeship agencies had not de- 
veloped ; consequently, the acquisition of voca- 
tional skill and interest was not provided for 
among the negroes. The most successful schools 
that grew up to meet this need were those 

12 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

which offered both liberal and vocational educa- 
tion, and in a sense made the latter the ground- 
work for the former. In the best negro schools 
of the South to-day, one will find many vocations 
taught in a very practical and effective manner, 
and it is generally conceded that the social ef- 
fects of this training are genuinely worth while. 
We may sum up by saying that the education 
whose controlling motive in the choice of means 
and methods is to prepare for productive effi- 
ciency is vocational; that vocational education, 
more or less unorganized and resting largely on 
native instincts and capacity, has always existed ; 
that it tends to be organized under school con- 
ditions only where special demands or necessities 
exist; and that from the standpoint of social 
necessity, vocational education given by some 
agency is indispensable. 

The Modern Social Need of Vocational Edu- 
cation under School Conditions 

It must be acknowledged that there is abroad 
in all civilized countries a growing conviction 
that vocational education should be better organ- 
ized and more efficient. If this conviction is well 
founded, it rests upon one or both of two condi- 
tions : Either the older agencies — the home, the 

13 



THE PROBLEM OF 

shop, and other forms of participation in pro- 
ductive industry — have lost their efficiency; or 
else the demands of modern life are changing, 
and imposing requirements which can be no 
longer met by these agencies. An analysis of 
the various types of productive effort will show 
that in some cases one, and in some the other, 
condition prevails ; while in not a few instances, 
the contemporary situation is the result, oh the 
one hand, of the decay, in old institutions, of vo- 
cational teaching, accompanied by a correspond- 
ing increase in the complexity and more scientific 
character of the industries themselves. 

It is a matter of common observation, for ex- 
ample, that the apprenticeship system in many 
trades has been rendered ineffective by the dis- 
appearance of the old form of industry in its 
complicated form. What is known as the factory 
method of production has to a large extent elim- 
inated the handicrafts in which apprenticeship 
had attained its better development. Specialized 
production prevents the shop from offering op- 
portunities for a rounded or efficient vocational 
education. 

On the other hand, the home as an educa- 
tional agency breaks down in those cases where 
the industry is centralized, and the growing 

14 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

child no longer participates in the processes car- 
ried on in proximity to the home. Under more 
primitive industrial conditions, the weaver, the 
metal-worker, the baker, the cabinetmaker, the 
blacksmith, and the printer worked in or adja- 
cent to the home ; the boy early became an as- 
sistant and with alert instincts soon acquired a 
considerable insight and experience, which con- 
tributed a valuable foundation for subsequent 
study. But the urban home offers no such op- 
portunities ; the father goes far away to his work, 
and, from the boy's point of view, the most con- 
spicuous fact about the factory, is the sign of 
"No Admittance" over the door. Here we have 
a well-defined instance of the loss on the part of 
the home of its power to perform its part in the 
educational process. 

The farm furnishes an instance of another 
kind. It has always been regarded as a valuable 
agency in vocational education, because of the 
richness of experience, and the necessary obliga- 
tion for participation in productive industry to 
be found there. The farm'of to-day is, at its best, 
as effective as it has ever been to transmit from 
father to son the simple arts of agriculture and 
stock-management. 

But modern agriculture has tended to become 

IS . 



THE PROBLEM OF 

more than a simple art ; it is increasingly a field 
of applied science. The father of to-day may be 
fairly competent in the old type of farming, but 
be quite incompetent to convey to his son the 
scientific principles and practices on which the 
new and successful type of agriculture must rest. 
The tillage of the soil, the selection of seed, the 
rotation of crops, the destruction of insect pests, 
the harvesting and curing of various products, 
the feeding of stock, the packing and marketing 
of things to be sold, — all these involve more and 
more a kind of scientific insight and training, 
which can be acquired only under special condi- 
tions of education. Here the home has not de- 
clined in efficiency, but the demands of modern 
life are such that it can no longer meet the mod- 
ern need for vocational education. 

Everywhere the social worker is confronted 
by deplorable consequences of these develop- 
ments of the modern economic system. These 
are the incidents and not the necessary products 
of that system, however, and it would be the 
sheerest folly to desire to restore the old and 
less effective forms of production for the sake 
of the educational possibilities which they con- 
tained. Everywhere we see thousands of boys 
growing up through the critical years, with no 

16 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

opportunity for effective training for a vocation. 
They enter the non-educative occupations only 
to emerge therefrom as handicapped, unskilled 
laborers. Everywhere under city conditions, we 
find girls less and less qualified to enter on home- 
making, because of the lack of educational op- 
portunities in this field, for the want of which 
the home can, in relatively few instances, be held 
responsible. The agricultural population of com- 
peting areas succeeds only in proportion as the 
opportunities for agricultural education have been 
made available to considerable numbers of those 
who choose this field of productive effort. In 
many lines of modern industry as practised in 
the United States, only the lower forms succeed, 
owing to absence of skilled labor. American 
manufacturers do not choose unskilled labor, but 
have been compelled, in many instances, to adapt 
themselves to it, wasteful and unsatisfactory 
though the process may be. 

The evidence that the old agencies of voca- 
tional education — the home, the shop, and other 
means of participation in productive industry — 
are no longer sufficient, could be multiplied. It 
is one of the certain social facts of our age. 
There can be little doubt that, in the process of 
social evolution, the time has arrived when voca- 

17 



THE PROBLEM OF 

tional, as well as liberal education must be con- 
ferred, so far as the large majority of people are 
concerned, by institutions especially devoted to 
this end. But these institutions must be schools. 
They must be specially organized for the pur- 
pose of this education, and they must select their 
courses and methods and teaching staff with 
this end in view. In other words, the period when 
vocational education must, of necessity, be car- 
ried on under school conditions has arrived, so 
far as the majority of callings are concerned, as 
it arrived decades ago in the matter of profes- 
sional education, which is only one division of 
vocational education. 

Should the State Support Schools for Vocational 
Education ? 

It is a significant fact that liberal education has 
attained its profound est development under the 
auspices of the State. As long as society in its 
corporate capacity refused to interfere in this 
field, liberal education was a matter for the select 
few — the so-called leisure class. We well know 
the history of the evolution of the State's support 
and control of liberal education. Prior to the Re- 
formation, the family and philanthropy (largely 
represented by the church) did good service in 

18 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

this field, but after the Reformation, it was seen 
by those who were concerned in producing in 
society the largest number of able citizens, that 
the State itself must guarantee the opportunities 
for liberal education to all. Hence evolved the 
public school system, from its early beginnings 
in America and Europe into the magnificent in- 
stitutions of to-day. Under public support, were 
first offered the opportunities for the simple 
school arts ; but the public school system has 
gradually been extended to include all that which 
is now comprised under the conception of sec- 
ondary education, and in many parts of the world, 
also includes the higher, or collegiate stages of 
liberal education. The policy of the State in this 
field in all civilized countries has been distinctly 
opposed to the principle of individualism, or 
laissez faire. More and more the competition of 
public effort has made difficult, if not impossible, 
private activity in the conduct of schools. More 
and more, the schools, the teachers, the material 
equipment of elementary, secondary, and higher 
liberal education, have been made freely avail- 
able to the youth of the community. If the prin- 
ciple be called socialistic, the modern civilized 
State has committed itself certainly to a highly 
socialistic policy in liberal education, and it has 

19 






THE PROBLEM OF 

pursued this policy, partly out of regard for the 
individual, but largely animated by the spirit of 
the higher social self-preservation. 

During the same time, however, with reference 
to the education which could be called voca- 
tional, the modern State has, with certain excep- 
tions, followed if anything an opposite policy. It 
is true, as previously indicated, that there have 
been fostered public professional schools, normal 
schools, and those for the higher agricultural and 
engineering callings ; and that the State has made 
vocational education a part of its contribution to 
the education of the mass of helpless children 
'of the community ; but, in all other respects, 
America and Great Britain, and to some extent 
the continental European nations, have only 
grudgingly recognized any obligation on the part 
of the State to lend its aid to a development of 
vocational education, as it does to that of other 
forms. Philanthropy has contributed to the es- 
tablishment of some schools and in certain direc- 
tions, as in commercial education, private effort for 
gain has been sufficient to procure some very re- 
spectable developments. On the whole, however, 
it seems to remain true that vocational education 
in schools under private or philanthropic effort 
will remain as circumscribed and partial as was 

20 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

liberal education before the State entered the 
field. 

Within recent decades, the continental Euro- 
pean countries have increasingly assumed re- 
sponsibility for vocational education under State 
support and control. The story of this needs no 
elaboration here, but it is a fact that in Germany, 
Denmark, Switzerland, France, Norway, and 
Sweden, a great variety of schools with voca- 
tional intent have arisen, which claim and obtain 
substantial aid from the State. To a certain ex- 
tent, Germany has made the acquisition of voca- 
tional training an obligatory matter which the 
family may not disregard. 

In America there is a growing conviction, on 
the one hand, that vocational education under 
school conditions is a necessity for the great ma- 
jority of workers, and on the other, that these 
schools can be provided adequately only by State 
support. It is a generally accepted political prin- 
ciple that the State should not perform those 
functions which private effort can willingly and 
efficiently accomplish ; that the State should re- 
serve as its province those fields of human neces- 
sity where private and philanthropic powers are 
insufficient to the social needs of the time. It is 
from this point of view that the desirability of 

21 



THE PROBLEM OF 

State action in the sphere of vocational educa- 
tion must be judged. We have first to answer 
the question : Is vocational education a social ne- 
cessity ? and in the second place : Can other agen- 
cies than the State effectively carry it on ? A 
variety of keen social observers have practically 
come to the conclusion that State action is now- 
necessary under American conditions in this field. 
They are convinced that the safety of the State 
and the happiness of individuals demand a better 
vocational education than is now obtainable j they 
cannot see that the older non-school institutions 
are or can be made competent to this end ; they 
are convinced that, under the conditions as they 
exist in a large majority of callings, vocational edu- 
cation must be obtained under school conditions ; 
and they believe that these can be successfully 
developed, maintained, and controlled only by 
that agency which expresses the collective wis- 
dom and power of society, namely, the State. 

Types of Vocational Education 
For convenience of discussion, it is desirable to 

classify the callings, into which nearly all men and 

women enter, into five great divisions. 1 These 

are : — 
1 In current discussion in France, a sixth division — the 

marine callings — is made. 

22 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

(a) The professional ; 
{b) The commercial ; 

(c) The agricultural ; 

(d) The industrial, or those connected with 
manufacturing and the mechanic arts ; 

(e) The household. 

It is obvious that each one of these great di- 
visions possesses a number of distinctive charac- 
teristics. The professional callings are noted for 
the elaborate development of the educational 
means to be employed in them, and the length 
of time given to preparation for them. The com- 
mercial callings range from those into which girls 
and boys enter at the age of ten or twelve — street 
trading, department store work, and the like — 
to those which are, in themselves, quasi profes- 
sions. The agricultural group comprises a variety 
of specialized occupations, involving tillage of the 
soil, care of animals, and the like; also ranging 
in complexity from the relatively simple and un- 
skilled to those which involve almost professional 
capacity. The most complex group is that here 
called the industrial, — embracing the great va- 
riety of crafts, trades, and manufacturing pursuits. 
As is well known, these range from the highly 
specialized occupations, into which children, wo- 
men, and untrained men may enter with little or 

23 



THE PROBLEM OF 

no preparation, to the higher mechanical and en- 
gineering callings which possess an elaborate 
technique. The household arts division here em- 
braces mainly the group of callings that centre 
around the home, and is intended to exclude those 
processes which, like weaving, spinning, clothing- 
making, fruit -preserving, baking, and the like, 
have become separated from the home, and are 
to be classed as manufacturing occupations. The 
phrase "home-making," however, still implies 
the possibility of considerable attainment in ap- 
plied art and science, when these are involved 
in the preparation of food, dressmaking, the care 
of children, and, in general, the management of 
a home. In the interest of logical completeness, 
a sixth division should be recognized, as in France, 
to embrace the callings, like those of the fisher- 
man and the sailor, which have to do with the sea. 
For further convenience, we may consider 
various stages, or degrees, in the educational 
preparations for the above groups of occupations, 
corresponding to the terminology now used in 
liberal education : We may call that vocational 
training, which is adapted to persons of average 
capacity under fifteen years of age, "elemen- 
tary" ; and that which takes youths regularly from 
fifteen to eighteen or nineteen, "secondary"; 

24 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

while that which presupposes an age more than 
eighteen, and corresponding attainments, may 
be called the "higher vocational training." 

Professional education is commonly classed as 
higher education; that is, it receives students 
after the completion of a secondary and some- 
times collegiate education ; but it is also true that, 
under some circumstances, the character of the 
elementary, and especially of the secondary 
stages, is determined somewhat by the probable 
requirements of the profession subsequently to 
be studied. 

We now have under school conditions higher 
agricultural education, and the beginnings of that 
of elementary and secondary grade, these terms 
being partly determined by the age of pupils con- 
cerned, and partly by the degree of intellectual 
advancement required before the vocational study 
may be taken up. 

In the commercial callings, schools are found 
for the higher, but only rarely for the lower levels, 
notwithstanding the fact that the bulk of workers 
are found in the lower grades of these callings. 
Certain specialized phases of commercial educa- 
tion, like bookkeeping, typewriting, and steno- 
graphy, have already been well developed under 
school conditions. 

25 



THE PROBLEM OF 

In the industrial group, the higher levels (if 
we may so classify the preparation for the en- 
gineering and technological occupations, which 
might also fairly be classed as professional) are 
already well supplied with schools. It is the aim 
of contemporary movements in the United States 
to supply more extended opportunities in the sec- 
ondary field, where wage-earners may be reached. 

In the household arts, there exist at the pre- 
sent time almost no genuine vocational schools, 
although there are widespread opportunities for 
some partial study and practice of these arts, as 
phases of liberal education. 

Pedagogical Divisions of Vocational Education 

Vocational education under school conditions 
presents a wide range of difficulties, many of 
which grow out of the peculiar pedagogy of the 
subject. It is well known that in vocational edu- 
cation, as carried on in the home and the shop, 
the strong feature is still to be found on the 
practical side ; that is, most of what the student 
learns, he learns by actual participation. The 
weak side of this vocational training is its absence 
of theory, its inability to give the student a com- 
prehension of the laws and principles involved. 
On the other hand, the school is peculiarly strong 

26 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

in its ability to impart the theory or abstract 
phases of the vocation, but is only partially adapted 
under existing conditions to give concrete par- 
ticipation. 

In the study and practice which contribute to 
vocational efficiency, we may distinguish three 
aspects, each involving distinct pedagogical char- 
acteristics and special problems of administra- 
tion. To train the horticulturist, for example, it 
is necessary to give him a variety of practical 
experiences in working with soil and plants and 
with the problems of marketing. In addition, he 
may, and should, study those phases of botany, 
physics, chemistry, entomology, bacteriology, 
meteorology, economics, etc., which contribute 
useful technical information and principles. A 
further field of possible study is found in the 
history of horticulture and the practice of that 
craft in other parts of the world, the evolution 
of plant life, etc. The first group of studies and 
practices may be called the concrete, specific, or 
practical ; the second group, the technical ; and 
the third, the general vocational studies. 

In the preparation of the machinist, practical 
work will be suggested in connection with the 
use of the lathe, the forge, the drill press, and 
other tools regularly employed in that calling. 

27 



THE PROBLEM OF 

The technical studies will be found in drawing, 
shop-mathematics, the principles of mechanics, 
etc. The general vocational studies may consist 
of readings in the history of metal- working, the 
evolution of modern industry and the place of 
iron and steel therein ; in the potentialities of 
trade-unionism, industrial cooperation, and the 
like. 

For the youth who is preparing to work in a 
commercial calling, practical studies are to be 
found in the actual work of bookkeeping, type- 
writing, business practice, and salesmanship. 
Technical studies maybe derived from these; 
also German, higher mathematics, commercial 
law, etc., may be pursued as technical studies. 
General vocational studies may be found in the 
history of commerce, geography (which for some 
callings would be a technical study), readings 
about industry in other fields, and the evolution 
of transportation and exchange. 

In the study of home-making, the girl would, 
in the actual performance of household tasks 
such as needle-work, cooking, cleaning, nursing, 
and the like, find the concrete basis in experi- 
ence for complete vocational study. Related 
technical studies will be found in those phases, 
however simplified, of chemistry, physics, bac- 

28 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

teriology, economics, architecture, and exchange, 
which contribute to the larger vocational effi- 
ciency. As general vocational studies, a variety of 
readings in the historic aspects of the household, 
the achievements of modern sanitation, the work 
of charity and philanthropy, and protective legis- 
lation suggest themselves. 

In existing schools where a complete voca- 
tional education is carried on, these three aspects 
are already found. In the training of teachers, 
for example, the practical work is found in the 
practice school, and other forms of apprentice- 
ship. Technical studies are usually found in the 
fields of applied psychology, method, and special 
studies in subject matter. The history of educa- 
tion, sociology, educational practices in foreign 
countries, and the writings and biographies of 
educational reformers constitute the general vo- 
cational studies. In the training of the physician, 
the dissecting-room, the clinic, and hospital prac- 
tice provide the concrete elements. Anatomy, 
materia medica, chemistry, and other studies 
supply the need for technical information and 
principles ; in addition, the history of medicine, 
medical sociology, and medical jurisprudence, as 
well as biology and psychology, may be regarded 
as general vocational studies. 

29 



THE PROBLEM OF 

From this analysis, certain conclusions may be 
drawn. In the first place, as regards the general 
vocational studies, it will be apparent that these 
involve methods and administration not unlike 
those found in the field of liberal education ; 
they are based largely on books, and have as their 
aim, the stimulation of ideals and vocational in- 
terests, rather than the acquisition of useful in- 
formation. From some points of view, these 
general vocational studies may be regarded as 
the luxuries of vocational education, although 
there can be no doubt that they have a direct 
usefulness because they stimulate the interests 
which tend to make a vocation attractive, and 
which undoubtedly broaden and prolong the pro- 
ductive life of the worker. 

In the second place, it may be noted that the 
technical studies as described, however they may 
vary for different vocations, may also be pursued 
largely under school conditions. To a large 
extent, these technical studies consist of art, 
mathematics, and science, in their various appli- 
cations. It will be noted, however, that in voca- 
tional preparation, not so much of pure science 
and its fundamental principles, as applications, 
are implied. Bacteriology, for example, as a gen- 
eral science, may be pursued by but few people, 

30 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

but there are certain applications of bacteriology 
which every nurse, housekeeper, and farmer 
may, and should, learn. Meteorology is a difficult 
science, but from meteorology may be taken 
certain specific situations which may, and should, 
be taught to every farmer. The same principle 
applies in the case of mathematics, although its 
application is yet obscured by the traditions of 
teaching in this field. For vocational purposes, 
the mathematics needed by the machinist differs 
widely from that needed by the farmer ; how far 
the bookkeeper may need algebra in any way 
may be questioned ; and on the other hand, the 
housekeeper needs a form of applied mathematics 
essentially different from all of the foregoing. 

In the third place, the concrete or practical 
work as outlined above involves a pedagogy and 
administration fundamentally different from that 
found in most existing schools. It is at this point 
that the traditional forms of education practi- 
cally break down ; and it is in this respect that 
the problem of vocational education, especially 
in connection with the training of youths be- 
tween the ages of fourteen and eighteen, pre- 
sents its greatest difficulties. Modern experience, 
as well as theory, tends to demonstrate that vo- 
cational education which ignores or slights this 

3i 



THE PROBLEM OF 

phase of practical training is largely futile. Fur- 
thermore, the same experience seems to indicate 
that the concrete and practical must not follow 
at a considerable distance technical and general 
vocational studies, but rather accompany, and in 
many cases, precede the same. 

The Order and Relation of the Pedagogic Stages 
in Vocational Education 

We have seen that, historically, the institu- 
tions which in the past gave vocational education 
were especially strong in the practical or concrete 
aspect of their subject, and weak in the more 
abstract phases. The home, farm, and shop have 
always provided an abundance of practical tasks 
and examples whereby to teach boys and girls 
the simple vocational arts. Under the apprentice- 
ship system, as fostered by guilds and govern- 
ments in the past, the courses in practical work 
were especially complete as respects length, com- 
prehensiveness, and thoroughness. 

On the other hand, the school has often been 
well equipped to give readily many of the the- 
oretic or more bookish phases of vocational prep- 
aration. Many types of complete vocational 
education have involved the cooperation of the 
two kinds of agencies. Evening schools, for 

32 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

example, have often taken mechanics who are 
already employed, and have given them something 
of the drawing, mathematics, and science, which 
they might need to supplement the practical learn- 
ing of their craft. Correspondence schools have 
flourished owing to their ability to give to the 
employed worker just the facts in drawing, 
science, and other theoretical studies which he 
might need. To a large extent, the continuation 
work in the German schools is of this order. It 
takes various groups of boys and girls, who are 
employed in the trades, and gives to them the 
needed supplemental education. 

In England, a considerable range of what are 
termed engineering or higher mechanical occu- 
pations involve the requirement that stages of 
study shall be alternated with periods — some- 
times as much as a year in length — of actual 
apprenticeship in the industry itself. So wide- 
spread have been developments of this sort, that 
it not infrequently happens that educators and 
others think of vocational education solely in 
terms of the general and technical studies in- 
volved. This notion has received added em- 
phasis from the fact that the higher reaches 
of all vocations require relatively so much theo- 
retical preparation as to make it appear that 

33 



THE PROBLEM OF 

the theoretical study is the essential and vital 
part. 

It is becoming apparent, however, that a more 
satisfactory theory of the pedagogy of vocational 
education must be developed. So far as the rank 
and file of students is concerned, it is increasingly 
evident that the more abstract studies, when not 
intimately related with concrete practice, fail to 
work out into the results expected. 

The abstract studies are necessary, but they 
must accompany, or be preceded by, a consider- 
able amount of actual participation in productive 
work, to the end that genuine vocational effi- 
ciency may result. It is even apparent that those 
modified forms of participation, such as are often 
found in business schools, manual training schools 
and classes, agricultural schools, and household 
arts schools, are of little service in vocational 
education because of their remoteness from the 
conditions of genuine productive work. These 
courses and studies will undoubtedly be found 
to have value, when they are arranged to follow, 
rather than to precede, a considerable amount of 
actual participation: e.g., it is not impracticable 
that, for a young apprentice who is working under 
shop conditions, a certain amount of work de- 
voted to special exercises for the attainment of 

34 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

particular types of efficiency might well be worth 
while. For the farmer's boy, who brings to the 
agricultural school a considerable body of expe- 
rience acquired under conditions of reality, the 
exemplification of modern processes as school ex- 
ercises may have decided value. 

It is, furthermore, becoming more and more 
evident that the technical studies, such as math- 
ematics, drawing, physical science, biological 
science, art, and the rest, have a genuine func- 
tional value in vocational education only when 
they are closely integrated with the educational 
results acquired through participation in the pro- 
ductive processes themselves. It is probably psy- 
chologically true that, for the average person, the 
study of these applied arts and sciences, quite 
apart from and anterior to any participation in 
the productive processes, is futile and unproduc- 
tive so far as vocational efficiency is concerned. 
Nothing can be more certain, however, than that 
the study of these same subjects, in close inter- 
relation with the productive processes, tends to 
expand rapidly the capacity of the worker. We 
may then base on these considerations a tenta- 
tive theory of vocational education. 

When the time arrives in the development of 
the boy or girl that he should seriously under- 

35 



THE PROBLEM OF 

take preparation for a calling, it is necessary that 
somehow and somewhere he should be able to 
devote a considerable time to actual participation 
in the concrete processes of the calling itself. He 
should get very near to reality, not only as regards 
the external characteristics of the work produced, 
but also as regards its market value, its rate of 
production, and the social circumstances attend- 
ant upon its production. Having thus come in- 
timately into contact with reality, he should 
have time set apart in which to study the more 
theoretical aspects of the calling. Here again, 
however, a sound theory would seem to require 
that mathematics, science, art, history, and other 
related subjects should not require such an order 
of presentation as to detach them from the ex- 
perience of the young worker. This has undoubt- 
edly been the vice of a great deal of the technical 
study carried on in schools for the purpose of 
supplemental education. Between the experience 
of the worker and the studies in the schools, there 
have been too few points of contact to serve to 
create true pedagogical efficiency. 

From this point of view, for example, in the 
making of the true agriculturist of middle rank, 
we should expect the boy to participate for a part 
of each day, or week, or month, or year, in the 

36 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

actual productive work of the home or school 
farm. We should expect him to study, not gen- 
eral botany, but that botany which is naturally 
suggested by the conditions under which he 
works ; his study of fertilizers, from the chemical 
and economic point of view, should begin with 
the fertilizers which he uses and the conditions 
under which, in attaining practical results, he 
uses them ; his study of bookkeeping should grow 
out of the income and expenditure conditions 
under which the work in which he participates 
is carried on ; his study of physics should rest on 
the foundation of his actual experience. 

Similarly, in the making of the mechanic, we 
should expect the boy to go to work either in 
a school, a shop, or a factory, where he could 
begin at the simpler stages of productive work, 
and where, from day to day, his work should be 
squared up with the conditions of actual produc- 
tion. This phase of his training should be such 
as to require shop clothing, shop hours, shop as- 
sociations, the standards of shop production, and 
some knowledge, and perhaps some sharing, of 
the actual value of his output. Under the phases 
of this experience can be collected related studies 
in drawing, applied science, art, bookkeeping, 
economics, the ethics of trade-unionism, and all 

37 



THE PROBLEM OF 

the other studies which have a greater or less 
vocational significance. 

In the preparation of the girl for the specific 
work of home-making, a variety of opportunities 
for concrete participation suggest themselves. 
Already in this field, we have a considerable va- 
riety of technical studies ; but, in so far as these 
are ineffective at present, their weakness is due to 
the lack of correlation between them and the home 
experience on which they are presumed to build. 

The commercial callings now present, for cer- 
tain occupations, well-worked-out school condi- 
tions of participation, especially in typewriting 
and certain forms of bookkeeping. On the other 
hand, it is evident that we have yet by no means 
solved the problems of providing the right kind 
of experiential basis for a considerable range of 
the clerical occupations. 

It must be at once admitted that, for a great 
variety of vocations, we can yet hardly see how, 
under school conditions, the concrete basis of 
participation in productive work can be found. 

Cooperation of Agencies in Vocational Education 

The foregoing analysis suggests that in many 
fields, the most effective vocational education 
might be achieved by the systematic cooperation 

38 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

of agencies. We already have, in the United 
States, for example, schools in which the boys 
give a part of the time — a half of each day, or 
alternate weeks — to shop-work in actual shops, 
and the remaining time to schools, whose theo- 
retic work is intimately connected with that of 
the shops. Where great manufacturing, trans- 
portation, or commercial agencies have developed 
private schools of their own, these schools have 
almost invariably been evolved so as to take the 
boys and girls who are already giving a consid- 
erable amount of time to the study and practice 
of the more practical aspects of the calling. 

It has already been shown that in England, 
the study of engineering callings requires part- 
time participation in productive industry. In 
some countries, in the marine callings, before 
the student may enter on theoretical study, he 
must have had a considerable time as an appren- 
tice in practice. 

In a large range of German intermediate tech- 
nical schools, one of the requirements for admis- 
sion is that the student shall have served one, 
two, or three years as a worker, and, as such, 
must have demonstrated his capacity for the 
further theoretic studies. Where correspondence 
work is successful, it is so mainly because it ap- 

39 



THE PROBLEM OF 

plies to a limited number of workers who have 
already achieved success along practical lines, 
and who, on the basis of that practical experi- 
ence, are able to acquire technical power. In 
some of the best work in household arts in Eng- 
land, the school and the home, or the school and 
the employer, now cooperate so intimately that 
the net effect is an integral vocational education. 
Some of the best continuation work in the United 
States practically accomplishes its results in the 
same way. 

It is, of course, not yet apparent how far this 
cooperative management is possible in various 
types of industry. The individualism of the Ameri- 
can employer and the lack of paternalistic attitude 
in the Government may make it impossible to 
achieve this form of cooperation, even if it were 
not open to objections on the grounds of its prac- 
ticability. If that should prove to be the case, it 
will undoubtedly be necessary, in the interests of 
complete vocational education, to develop facili- 
ties for the acquisition of practical experience in 
the schools themselves, and herein lies the great- 
est administrative difficulty to be encountered by 
these schools. To achieve this end, they must 
abandon a variety of traditions which are dear to 
schoolmasters and school administrators. The 

40 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

proposed school must have the aspect of a shop 
rather than a school. In the length of day, shop 
surroundings, the disposal of product, the train- 
ing of teachers, and the maintenance of discipline, 
shop standards rather than school standards will 
have to prevail. So radical a departure will this 
be that many of the ablest students of the situa- 
tion are convinced that a separate system of 
administration from that of the schools of liberal 
learning may prove to be necessary, temporarily, 
at least. 

For a long time, we may expect so-called voca- 
tional education to tend to be theoretic and 
bookish, unless we frankly accept the notion that 
the study of theory must rest on and intimately 
blend with conditions which are eminently prac- 
tical. It will be seen that no one can yet prophesy 
what will be the type of vocational arrangement 
for any given industry. It may prove highly prac- 
ticable to bring private agencies into cooperation 
with the schools ; on the other hand, it may prove 
indispensable that the vocational school shall 
reproduce all the conditions, practical and theo- 
retical, necessary for the giving of complete vo- 
cational efficiency. We are still dealing with only 
the beginnings of these problems. 



41 



THE PROBLEM OF 

The Relation of Vocational Education to Manual 

Training 

In modern educational doctrine, manual train- 
ing occupies an intermediate field between voca- 
tional and liberal education. In the minds of 
many, who were originally influential in introduc- 
ing drawing, manual training, household arts, and 
mechanical arts, these studies were designed to 
contribute to vocational efficiency. By school- 
masters and educational administrators, their 
contributions to liberal education have been con- 
stantly exalted, and these subjects have been 
largely divested of vocational significance. It is 
undeniable that manual training, rightly con- 
ducted, is an important modern contribution to 
liberal education, and especially in proportion 
as the limitations of the home deprive the child 
of opportunity for experience in the field of con- 
structive and manual activities. 

Few will doubt that a wide range of contact 
with tools and the materials to which tools are 
applied, as found in the hand-work, bench-work, 
gardening, cooking, and in the machine-shop work 
of the modern schools, is exceedingly desirable. 
It is a fact, however, that the manual training so 
given is rarely controlled by the motive of voca- 

42 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

tional training, and that it rarely results in any 
recognizable form of vocational efficiency. In its 
contributions to vocational education, it is more 
nearly comparable with the development which 
results from play and other forms of spontaneous 
experien ce-getting. 

The mechanic arts and technical high schools, 
which were originally expected to train the higher 
ranks of factory- and trade- workers, have gener- 
ally failed to achieve this end. These magnificent 
schools have been sought in increasing numbers 
by youths so situated as to be capable of an ex- 
tended liberal education. They have offered 
kinds of liberal education which function more 
vitally, in many cases, than do the classical 
studies offered by other schools. Manual train- 
ing, however, has seldom been more than an in- 
cident in such general education. Only a few 
hours of work a week, at best, have been al- 
lotted to it. The spirit of approach has been that 
of the amateur, or dilettante, rather than of the 
person interested in attaining vocational fitness. 
Only slowly has the work been removed from the 
field of amateurish effort. Much of the original 
manual training was affected by the arts-and- 
crafts movement, which is fundamentally im- 
portant to the consumer of products rather than 

43 



THE PROBLEM OF 

to the producer. Much of the household work 
was impracticable, when considered from the 
standpoint of household necessities. Through- 
out, it has been dominated by the ideals of liberal 
education rather than of vocation, and as such, 
it has in spite of a certain artificial character and 
a considerable disregard of pedagogic principles, 
made important contributions. It can hardly be 
doubted that a place of increasing importance is 
still reserved for manual training, as part of a 
liberal education. It will be remembered that 
liberal education functions in the avocational, as 
contrasted with the vocational side of life. For 
the prospective lawyer, gardening, cabinetwork, 
or pottery may be important and suggestive ac- 
tivities. A small amount of gardening would 
probably make all people more intelligent con- 
sumers. A vital form of constructive work in the 
manual training field will enhance the powers of 
all people to appreciate the material surroundings 
in which they must live. 

For girls, a wide range of activities can be de- 
vised on the manual training basis which will 
make them more judicious consumers. Further- 
more, a generous course in manual training ac- 
tively followed provides a variety of suggestions 
for subsequent choice of a vocation. Through it, 

44 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

many boys will discover a bent, or capacity, 
along which a vocational education may be car- 
ried out. 

All this assumes that manual training, like the 
other factors in a liberal education, will be made 
progressively more vital ; will divest itself of 
formal and pedantic elements ; will cease to rely 
upon a discredited psychology ; and will take ad- 
vantage of fundamental instincts and interests 
in those to whom it applies. Manual training 
will be taken, not in the spirit of the vocational 
worker, but in that of the liberal student, think- 
ing of and comprehending the world in which he 
lives. It will preserve many of the elements of 
a high-grade play or avocation. If we assume 
that little distinctively vocational education will 
be found in the elementary schools, we may also 
assume that many pupils will be allowed even 
greater opportunities than are now available for 
the development of their capacities in the field 
of the industrial arts, studied mainly from the 
point of view of gaining variety and range of ex- 
perience, and a basis for the subsequent selection 
of vocational activities. 

During the high school period, it is highly 
probable that an increasing number of boys and 
girls will find in enriched manual training a 

45 



THE PROBLEM OF 

means of liberal education, such as now the tra- 
ditional studies can hardly be said to contribute. 
This enriched manual training will be more and 
more correlated with mathematics, science, art, 
history, and economics in such a way as to cause 
these to function more certainly as elements in a 
liberal education. 

Here again, as in the last section, it must be 
asserted that manual training and vocational edu- 
cation should be controlled by different purposes 
to a considerable degree, though each contributes 
measurably to the purposes of the other. If man- 
ual training is designed to give the breadth of 
experience, to evoke the interests, and to stimu- 
late the forms of appreciation desired, then it 
cannot be identified with the intensive and pur- 
posive character of vocational education. Vo- 
cational education must be carried on, as far as 
possible, under the conditions of a workshop. 
Manual training, as a part of liberal education, 
must not divorce itself from contemporary life ; 
but, on the other hand, it must be approached 
from the standpoint of the breadth and interest 
inherent in the true instrumentalities of liberal 
education. 



4 6 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

Problems of Intermediate or Introductory Voca- 
tional Education 

While for many types of vocational education 
it will be possible to assume the completion of a 
high school course, it will probably remain true 
for a long time that large numbers of children, 
owing to predisposition, or the economic situa- 
tion in which they find themselves, will desire 
to make beginnings of vocational training shortly 
after passing the age of fourteen ; on the other 
hand, in many industries and commercial fields, 
children are not desired under the age of sixteen. 
It has been pointed out in the report of the 
Douglas Commission (of Massachusetts), as well 
as elsewhere, that the period from fourteen to 
sixteen is a critical one in the vocational develop- 
ment of large numbers of children. This is the 
period when economic necessity or ambition 
tempts children into callings which are tempo- 
rarily quite remunerative (in a relative sense for 
these children), but which are essentially non- 
educative. The development of factory produc- 
tion and business on a large scale has opened a 
great many avenues of this sort, which are tempt- 
ing to youth, but the outcome of which is the un- 
skilled worker. Intermediate vocational education 

47 



THE PROBLEM OF 

adapted to children from fourteen to sixteen, 
which should be practical and productive, and at 
the same time, lead towards profitable occupa- 
tions, is highly desirable, but its development at 
the present time is beset with difficulties and 
uncertainties. We know, for example, that in the 
industries, specialization is the rule, but during 
this introductory period, it would seem unde- 
sirable for pupils to specialize much in their 
work ; rather, from the theoretical standpoint, this 
introductory preparation should be broad, and, 
as far as possible, lead to fundamental forms of 
skill and comprehension of large principles. To 
reconcile this demand with the other require- 
ment previously mentioned, that the work should 
be productive and in accord with prevailing in- 
dustrial tendencies, is difficult. A typical ex- 
ample may be found in the shoe-manufacturing 
industry. This industry is now subdivided into 
nearly one hundred distinct branches, each one 
of which possesses some of the characteristics of 
a trade. Assuming that the specialized workers 
in this field usually begin at sixteen or seventeen, 
it is questionable if, at the age of fourteen, in 
commencing industrial preparation for this work, 
the young worker should be specialized ; on the 
other hand, how may the beginner engage in pro- 

48 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

ductive work in this field which has a marketable 
significance ? 

There is also the very great administrative dif- 
ficulty of providing, under public school condi- 
tions, for a wide range of industries with their 
expensive equipment. The probabilities are that 
in time we shall discover a relatively small num- 
ber of groups of industries, in each one of which 
a sufficient scope and variety of projects can be 
evolved around which the future worker can per- 
form practicable and profitable operations, while, 
at the same time, getting a fundamental voca- 
tional training. We know that such groups of 
related industries exist. In the United States, 
for example, over a million workers are found in 
the wood-working callings. Many of these are 
extremely specialized but, at bottom, they rest 
on a few tool-forms — hand and power — and on 
certain general knowledge and experience with 
materials. It seems highly probable that boys of 
fourteen, when beginning their vocational train- 
ing, can be set to work on projects involving 
wood and wood-working tools in such a way as 
to produce a marketable product and that, by 
gradual intensification and specialization of effort, 
they can be made ready by the age of sixteen for 
more specific trade instruction in building, cab- 

49 



THE PROBLEM OF 

inetmaking, etc. A similarly large group of work- 
ers employ iron and steel, and the tools related 
thereto, as basal elements. Other great groups 
are found in the factory production of textile 
goods ; in the manufacture of textile goods into 
clothing ; in the minor metal industries (ranging 
from jewelry to tinsmithing) ; in the industries 
employing clay and furnace heat (glass, pottery, 
etc.) ; in the semi-mechanical industries, involv- 
ing the control of steam and other power-supply- 
ing agencies ; in the food-packing industries (in- 
cluding fruit, vegetables and meat) ; and several 
other divisions. 

It is also quite possible that a combination of 
public and private effort, in the form of coopera- 
tion discussed above, would enable the prospec- 
tive worker at the age of fourteen to get, in the 
factory, by passing from one specialized product 
to another for two or three years, a fundamental 
form of training and a wide range of experience, 
which would make the most satisfactory founda- 
tion for subsequent specialization. This discus- 
sion, of course, applies merely to the difficulties of 
giving the concrete or practical side of vocational 
training; the theoretical, or more abstract forms, 
are relatively easy of achievement. 



50 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

The Problem of Women in Industry 

Any discussion of contemporary industry must 
take account of the fact that, under modern eco- 
nomic conditions, women are to an increasing 
extent drawn away from the home and into other 
productive callings. It has been pointed out by 
some clear-sighted writers that, to a large extent, 
women have simply followed the industries away 
from the home, as these have been organized 
more and more under factory conditions. It is 
well known, of course, that textile manufacture, 
garment-making, food-preserving, and industries 
like baking and brewing have been detached from, 
the home, leaving it relatively poorer in indus- 
trial opportunity. From the social point of view, 
it must be expected that all women, as well as 
men, will somehow and somewhere be producers, 
it being assumed, of course, that home-making is 
one of the productive callings. 

It is, therefore, not unnatural that women 
should be found in increasing numbers in the 
industries, but a peculiar problem arises in con- 
nection with their education therefor. The fact is, 
that while enormous numbers of girls and young 
women may be expected to take up wage-earning 
careers, it must also be expected, in normal so- 

5i 



THE PROBLEM OF 

ciety, that large numbers of these will become 
home-makers after a few years in wage-earning 
callings. Among factory populations, it is a well- 
known fact to-day that the great majority of girls 
begin as wage-earners at from fourteen to six- 
teen years of age ; that they continue as such for 
from five to eight years, after which they marry 
and, if conditions are at all prosperous, they 
devote themselves henceforth to home-making. 
Only under economic conditions of severe stress 
is it necessary that a woman, who must care for 
children, is obliged also to supplement that re- 
sponsibility with work outside the home ; and 
this is a condition which it must be the aim of 
social effort to disapprove, and reduce where pos- 
sible, in the interests of the well-being of the 
home and its children. 

We now see, therefore, the twofold character 
of the education which must be designed for large 
numbers of women : they must be prepared, as 
it were, for two careers, the first of which will 
continue for a few years only ; the other of which 
must be prolonged and for which a proper edu- 
cation is highly desirable. Under primitive con- 
ditions, the wage-earning career of the girl was 
usually spent in some home where she continued 
to learn the arts that would subsequently be of 

52 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

service in her own home. Under modern wage- 
earning conditions, it can hardly be said that the 
girl who becomes a worker in the factory, de- 
partment-store, or the clothing-making establish- 
ment, is getting therefrom even a small part of 
the equipment that will help her in home-making ; 
as a matter of practical experience, it is known 
that during this period she may be positively 
unfitted as regards the thrift and practical quali- 
ties required in the home - maker. Already a 
few vocational schools for girls have been estab- 
lished, having reference to the wage -earning 
callings. As a part of liberal education, increas- 
ing attention is given in all types of schools to 
preparation for household occupations. For the 
girl so situated as to be able to take considerable 
part of a general secondary education, the oppor- 
tunities for training for the household seem some- 
what promising, but, for that large number who 
desire, or who are obliged to begin wage-earning 
shortly after fourteen years of age, the opportu- 
nities for satisfactory home-training seem to be 
very limited. It has been suggested that this 
problem will, to some extent, be solved by ac- 
cepting what seems to be a present tendency of 
the industries to put the girls into highly special- 
ized occupations, requiring little or no educational 

53 



THE PROBLEM OF 

preparation ; and to provide these same persons, 
by extension classes and otherwise, during the 
wage-earning period, with some training for home- 
making. To an increasing extent, it seems prob- 
able that the protection of the law will be thrown 
around the working girl, as regards hours of labor, 
physical conditions, and, it may be expected, op- 
portunities for necessary continuation education. 
It certainly seems impracticable to deprive girls 
from fourteen to twenty of the opportunities for 
wage-earning ; on the other hand, it is certainly 
undesirable that, during this period, there should 
be no preparation for home-making interests. 
Society will undoubtedly require that the two 
functions become harmonized, to the end that the 
welfare of the individual and the soundness of 
society may at the same time be conserved. 

Problems of Agricultural Education 

Great interest attaches at the present time to 
agricultural training, as a phase of vocational 
education. America is peculiarly adapted to the 
agricultural pursuits, and it is increasingly evident 
that it is socially wholesome for the State to 
have a considerable number of its members in this 
field of productive work. It has been previously 
pointed out that education for the agricultural 

54 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

callings is no less necessary than for the trades, 
and that the increasing application of science 
makes greater demands on the technical side 
of this training. The administrative problems 
of agricultural education are, however, somewhat 
peculiar. In manufacturing areas and cities, 
where the population is dense, the specialized in- 
dustrial school is feasible ; in rural areas, if the 
youth are to remain at home, it becomes an 
administrative problem of great difficulty to pro- 
vide the special facilities for agricultural educa- 
tion. 

The American rural community has not only 
developed a system of elementary education, but 
has, almost everywhere, in recent years, provided 
the opportunities for secondary education in the 
liberal arts. Now that agricultural education is 
also demanded, the question arises as to whether 
it can be integrated with the existing liberal arts 
schools, rather than organized on a separate basis. 
It will later be shown that for many types of 
vocational education, a certain amount of separa- 
tion in administration from the ordinary school 
system is necessary, in order to insure a suc- 
cessful development. In the case of agriculture, 
however, it must be remembered that the boys 
and girls come usually from farm homes, where 

55 



THE PROBLEM OF 

a certain amount of home vocational training, or, 
at least, the opportunities for it, still exist. Some 
careful students of the subject insist that if, in 
an ordinary high school, a department of agri- 
cultural training under competent direction be 
organized, and if the work be so conducted as to 
take advantage of the concrete experience ob- 
tained in the home and on the farm, excellent 
results of a vocational kind will follow. On the 
other hand, it is feared by many of those genu- 
inely interested in agricultural education, that 
the liberal-arts atmosphere of the high school will 
tend to make of the agricultural education an 
unsubstantial article, formed largely in imitation 
of the other studies ; that, in spite of good inten- 
tions, it will tend to become bookish and unreal ; 
that the older theory of correlating cultural and 
vocational education will be the undoing of the 
latter. From this point of view, general agricul- 
tural education can be carried on only in the sepa- 
rate institution which is more farm than school, 
and in which the conditions of practical partici- 
pation in productive work form the controlling 
element in the total programme. Both forms 
of organization are at present having experi- 
mental development, and it is quite possible that 
within a few years, we shall know, on the basis 

56 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

of practical results, what is desirable. It is not 
impossible that a place will be found for each 
form of organization. The high school, with an 
agricultural department, may prove to form an 
excellent institution for almost any rural com- 
munity, where cooperation with home activities 
is practicable ; and on the other hand, this type 
may be supplemented, for somewhat older chil- 
dren, by a centralized institution, whose oppor- 
tunities for vocational training will be more con- 
centrated and effective, and which shall, by short 
courses and special opportunities, give the kind 
of training which is impossible to the first. 

Problems of Administration 

The administration of American education is 
commonly democratic and local, by which is meant 
that ultimate control lies in the hands of repre- 
sentatives of the people, and the units of admin- 
istration are small rather than State-wide. From 
what has already been said, it is evident that vo- 
cational schools, under public support, will pre- 
sent many points of difference, if not of contrast, 
to schools now in existence, which were founded 
to perpetuate and develop the traditions of liberal 
education. Such schools must approximate shop 
conditions in their arrangements ; their hours per 

57 



THE PROBLEM OF 

day, and days per week, must gradually approach 
those of productive industry, rather than those 
of ordinary schools; the clothing must be that 
adapted to practical work ; and the teachers must 
be, primarily, efficient workmen and, secondarily, 
trained in the art of teaching and controlling 
young people. 

It may well be questioned how far education 
of this sort may require special administrative 
machinery for its conduct, direction and inspec- 
tion, both as respects lay boards, on the one hand, 
and its expert managers and teachers on the other. 
It is feared, and not unjustly, that boards of 
education accustomed to the traditions of liberal 
education may allow the vocational training to 
become bookish and impractical. Men engaged 
in productive industry and who, therefore, com- 
prehend some of the limitations and necessities 
of the training required for practical efficiency, 
may well be excused for their present distrust of 
superintendents of schools and principals as ad- 
ministrators of these vocational types of educa- 
tion. In time, it will undoubtedly prove true that 
men of capacity as school administrators will come 
fully to understand the philosophy of vocational 
education, after which they will become compe- 
tent as directors of the same. In the mean time, 

58 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

it is a practical and pertinent question, how far 
vocational education should be separated from 
liberal, in administration. 

It is generally agreed that the vocational school 
should develop amid its own surroundings, in 
order that it may preserve its contact with pro- 
ductive industry. Furthermore, it is generally 
agreed that a vocational school or system of 
schools should have, either as a board of control, 
or as a board in an advisory capacity, a body of 
persons who, as employers, employees and inde- 
pendent workers, should have a close contact with 
productive industry of the type concerned. It may 
be found administratively feasible to allow the ex- 
isting boards of education, and the boards which 
provide support, to oversee, in a general way, the 
vocational schools, provided opportunities can be 
developed whereby the advisory committees can 
stand in some effective relation to the admission 
of students, the selection of teachers, and the 
determination of the practical pedagogy of the 
school. A somewhat similar question arises with 
regard to the expert direction. Should the mana- 
ger of a vocational school who must be, prima- 
rily, an administrator in sympathy with vocational 
education, be under the same general direction 
as are the heads of other schools ? In some places, 

59 






THE PROBLEM OF 

a superintendent of schools can be found, who 
has correct perspective and insight regarding 
vocational education ; in other places, the super- 
intendent is dominated by academic traditions, 
and finds it practically impossible to enter into 
sympathetic connections with the aims and meth- 
ods of vocational schools. 

The question of inspection, or State super- 
vision, presents like difficulties. From the stand- 
point of general administration, it is highly de- 
sirable that all general educational forces should 
be unified in one State body, acting through a 
single general agent ; on the other hand, this 
again may fail to guarantee the sympathetic and 
practical oversight which is necessary for the 
evolution of a true vocational education. The 
difficulty may be solved by the creation of sup- 
plemental advisory boards, and by the employ- 
ment, under the State Board, of one or more ex- 
perts to direct vocational education as specialists, 
who shall act in a coordinate capacity with other 
experts. 

The probabilities are that the American States 
will refuse to erect a complete, independent ma- 
chinery for the conduct of vocational education ; 
that, on the other hand, in all States, there will 
be attempts to introduce, in professional and ad- 

60 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

visory capacities, experts and bodies of laymen 
who may be expected to preserve a sympathetic 
attitude towards these newer types of schools, 
and to promote the ends for which they exist. 
To entrust vocational schools entirely to those 
familiar with the administration of liberal educa- 
tion only, will undoubtedly often prove unwise ; 
on the other hand, to endow both expert and lay 
bodies with definite responsibilities, and to re- 
quire that they cooperate effectively with indus- 
trial and other agencies having a special contact 
with and interest in vocational schools, will tend 
undoubtedly to give the maximum of efficiency. 

Miscellaneous Problems 

Several other special problems will appear in 
connection with the organization and conduct of 
vocational education : — 

(a) It has been already pointed out that the 
practical work of the vocational school should 
conform approximately to the prevailing condi- 
tions of industry. This also involves the idea 
that the output should have a market value, 
and that it should be disposed of, partly to the 
profit of the school, and partly to the profit of 
the individual worker. It should be quite clear 
that the motive of the student can be greatly 

61 



THE PROBLEM OF 

stimulated by this procedure, and that it is so- 
cially uneconomical to have students in this work 
confine their efforts to unproductive exercises. 
But the disposal of product presents many dif- 
ficulties. A part of it can doubtless be absorbed 
into the public utilities of the community, as, for 
example, in wood-working shops, where book- 
cases and other forms of furniture can be made 
for use in local public schools. In some schools, 
repair work comes into this category. Agricul- 
tural schools, with boarding facilities, supply a 
considerable amount of the food stuffs and tools 
necessary to their work. On the whole, however, 
these methods of disposal will doubtless prove 
inadequate. It will be necessary that the product 
of the school find its way to market, in competi- 
tion with the output of the industries. This form 
of disposition will require exceedingly careful 
management, in order that the advantages of 
the school may not be used to the detriment of 
producers outside. In any event, it would seem 
that the total output of such schools must be 
so small as to present but a small element of 
danger in this connection, provided the market- 
ing is so carried on as not to disturb prevailing 
market rates. 

(b) Vocational education will have to be varied 

62 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

in kind, according to the variety of callings for 
which preparation is given. It would also appear 
that it must be varied in degree and aim, in 
order to adapt it to the varied capacities and 
economic needs of those who seek it. This means 
that preconceived notions as to length of courses 
and organization of work must give way to the 
necessities disclosed by experience. It must be 
recognized that it will be desirable to maintain 
short courses for workers already in the industries, 
and these may partake of a highly specialized char- 
acter. Young men who have been farming for 
some years may desire six-weeks or three-months 
courses in the technical aspects of poultry-raising, 
bee-keeping, and the like. Such short and inten- 
sive technical courses are already occasionally 
found, and are exceedingly valuable. Again, it 
may happen that a man already employed in a 
manufacturing industry may desire a short and 
intensive course in the use of some particular tool 
or process. These short courses may either take 
the part-time form, or may involve the worker's 
taking a furlough from his employment. Private 
efforts, like those of the Young Men's Christian 
Association, already give many suggestions as to 
the feasibility of these short courses. It will be 
evident that, as vocational education develops 

63 



THE PROBLEM OF 

and schools become equipped, a constantly in- 
creasing range of opportunities will present them- 
selves for useful service. 

(c) In view of the fact that the technical stud- 
ies, in a satisfactory form of vocational educa- 
tion, must be closely related to the practical, it 
is evident that we still lack, to a large extent, 
the text-books and other guides necessary to this 
end. In fact, it may prove necessary that in each 
school, to a considerable extent, special syllabi, 
or text-books, be worked out, adapted to the 
local conditions. It will be apparent to any ob- 
server that the correspondence-schools, business- 
schools, and similar organizations have already 
worked out a variety of appliances of this kind. 
It may be expected that when within these 
schools the teachers have fully grasped the ped- 
agogy involved, a large variety of syllabi and 
other helps will appear which will assist any 
teacher in finding problems and studies adapted 
to his local situation. 

(d) It has been noted above that care must 
be exercised in developing vocational education 
that market conditions be not disturbed. It will 
also be evident that such schools present prob- 
lems in connection with the labor market as well. 
In certain industries, the organization of labor 

6 4 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

has succeeded in producing certain standards of 
compensation, the further maintenance of which 
appears to be dependent on a limitation in the 
supply of workers offering themselves. Specific 
situations will doubtless arise in which vocational 
schools may operate, if improperly managed, to 
break down prevailing rates of compensation. 
Here again, however, the larger social need 
must control, and the administrators of such 
schools must so organize their efforts as not to 
inflict undue hardship on existing employment. 
The controlling social need must be the supply 
of opportunities for vocational education to as 
many boys and girls as possible, in the convic- 
tion that the presence in society of a very large 
number of well-trained workers will redound to 
the benefit of all society. Subject to this con- 
trolling principle, special adjustment must be 
made, wherever possible, to prevent hardship. 

The Support of Vocational Education 

Experience already demonstrates that voca- 
tional education will prove to be expensive. 
Where part-time schemes do not succeed, the 
equipment of independent schools will prove 
costly. Under any circumstances, the teachers 
will be obliged to have a combination of practical 

65 



THE PROBLEM OF 

and theoretical training, which will make it 
necessary that they be paid more than skilled 
workers in the fields from which they come. 
These teachers, again, can handle effectively only 
relatively small groups of students, and it may 
be expected, therefore, that the annual per capita 
cost of genuinely vocational education will range 
from $75.00, at the lowest, to several hundred 
dollars, as a maximum. It may be anticipated, 
of course, that for large numbers of workers, a 
course less than four years in length will be 
sufficient. The expenditure for these lines must 
be looked at from the social point of view, and 
as a form of social investment. A given commu- 
nity may well expect to receive back far more 
than this outlay in the shape of the increased 
productive capacity of the workers turned out. 

Owing to conditions promoting mobility in 
American labor, it has become customary for 
workmen to move easily from one community to 
another. If workmen stayed in the place of their 
birth and education, a given community could 
expect to find its wealth increasing proportion- 
ately, if it supported vocational schools, but there 
is no guarantee that the workman trained in one 
community will remain there ; consequently, it 
becomes desirable and just that the larger ad- 

66 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

ministrative units should contribute something 
to this form of education, since the benefits of 
it spread over the larger area. To this end, it is 
becoming recognized that the State, as a taxing 
unit, should contribute something — if not fully 
one-half — to the cost of maintenance of these 
vocational schools. In fact, it may be asserted 
that the National Government itself could legiti- 
mately be called upon to aid this form of edu- 
cation, since the general migratory tendency of 
laborers carries them constantly beyond State 
bounds. The National Government already con- 
tributes to vocational education of a higher, or 
semi-professional level, in the engineering or 
agricultural callings. From the administrative 
point of view, it is desirable and expedient that 
it should contribute to work still farther down 
the line. 

Those who are interested in the expansion of 
vocational education must tend constantly to in- 
terpret it as a productive and justifiable form of 
social investment. It must be pointed out that 
already the American public expends upon a 
number of relatively unproductive lines of activity 
vastly greater sums than are expended for edu- 
cation. The actual cost of the liquor consump- 
tion of the American people is probably three or 

6 7 



\ 



THE PROBLEM OF 

four times as great as that of education. The 
outlay for tobacco is commonly supposed to be 
about equal to the cost of all forms of public in- 
struction. Another field of expenditure, which 
can hardly be described as being as socially pro- 
ductive as education, is advertising ; yet the total 
outlay on it is in excess of that for all forms of 
education. 

Owing to imperfect systems of taxation, the 
burden of supporting either liberal or vocational 
education seems often to be an especially heavy 
one. The fault is to be found, not in the actual 
cost of such education, but in the imperfect dis- 
tribution of its burdens. Communities must be 
made to realize that the total amount of social 
outlay for education is even now but an insig- 
nificant part of the total social expenditure ; and 
that, on the other hand, that outlay is probably 
one of the most effective forms of expenditure 
yet devised. Constant insistence on these notions 
will, in the course of time, bring about reforms 
in taxing methods, devices for the reduction of 
wasteful expenditure, and a fuller appreciation of 
the value of expenditure for education, liberal 
and vocational. 



68 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

The Teaching Force 

It is by this time fully obvious that the 

problem of supplying teachers for vocational 

schools differs largely from similar problems in 

other departments of education. For many years, 

in Europe and America, attempts have been 

made to recruit the teaching force in vocational 

schools, from people trained along academic and 

pedagogic lines. In nearly all cases, this attempt 

has failed, mainly because such teachers lacked 

concrete and practical experience with industrial 

conditions. However well-intentioned, they were 

not able to keep themselves in touch with the 

actual requirements of productive industry. It is 

generally agreed to-day that a successful teacher 

in a vocational field must be primarily equipped 

as a practical workman. To this equipment of 

habit, skill, and knowledge, it is highly desirable 

that he should add as much pedagogic ability and 

general culture as possible. In the training of 

such teachers, therefore, it seems probable that 

for a long time society will have to endeavor to 

pick from the field of young workmen and others 

who have served a successful apprenticeship 

those who manifest some teaching ability, or 

ambition to enter this field. These maybe given 

69 



THE PROBLEM OF 

a short course of training in theoretical pedagogy 
and, possibly, some beginnings in the practice 
of teaching. It is already obvious, of course, that 
there must be many types of vocational education 
and, consequently, there must be many sources 
of practical work from which teachers are to be 
drawn. 

Whether it will prove practicable to assemble 
skilled young workers in a central institution for 
the purpose of giving them their pedagogic train- 
ing is not now apparent. At first, it may prove 
feasible to have short courses or institutes in 
which practically trained men and women of 
some teaching aptitude can be gathered for the 
purpose of learning something of the art of 
teaching. The building up of a teaching force 
for the vocational schools ought not to prove an 
insurmountable problem when once the charac- 
ter of the field is recognized. These teaching 
positions may be made to pay somewhat better 
than the positions of skilled workmen along 
commercial, industrial, and agricultural lines. 
The permanency of the position and the agree- 
able character of the work should prove added 
attractions. It is improbable that we shall, for a 
long time, see training schools that will endeavor 
to comprehend the entire range of training for 

70 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION • 

this field, including the stages of apprenticeship ; 
on the other hand, it may be expected, as voca- 
tional schools develop and succeed, that in the 
student body of each, there will appear young 
workmen with teaching capacity, and these may 
gradually be directed toward preparation for 
teaching as a career. At bottom, the question 
of supplying teachers is one of sufficient com- 
pensation ; given a satisfactory financial basis, it 
will not prove at all impossible to find many in- 
telligent young workmen who will gladly take 
up this work. 

The Relation of Vocational to Cultural Education 

Much confusion of thought exists as to the 
relation of vocational to cultural education. This 
is natural, in view of the attempts that have been 
made to carry on vocational education by the 
same administrative machinery, and along the 
same pedagogic lines as the well-established 
forms of liberal education, but it is necessary to 
recognize that the two forms are largely un- 
like as regards aims, administrative machinery, 
and pedagogic method to be employed. Both 
have something of a common basis in certain 
studies like reading, writing, number, and ele- 
mentary drawing ; even in the case of these stud- 

7i 



THE PROBLEM OF 

ies, however, so far as the rank and file of 
workers are concerned, there relatively early ap- 
pears the possibility of differentiation of aim ac- 
cording as the vocational or the cultural purpose 
is to control. Certain phases of liberal education, 
like history, civics, geography, science, and mathe- 
matics, may have contributed something of the 
knowledge and ideals which later come to be of 
vocational significance, but these must be looked 
upon as by-products, and, to a considerable ex- 
tent, as accidental elements, from the point of 
view of strictly vocational training. 

It was formerly supposed that any study, seri- 
ously pursued, resulted in a certain amount of 
mental training which could be employed in any 
field, related or unrelated to that study. Under 
the influence of this idea, it was believed that 
the study of higher mathematics or of foreign 
language resulted in a development of certain 
intellectual powers, and that these powers could 
be readily applied when vocational pursuits were 
undertaken. From the standpoint of modern psy- 
chology, this doctrine has been much discredited. 
It is probably true that liberal studies pursued 
with interest do result in some powers which 
may have vocational application ; it is much more 
probable, however, that the vocational success, 

72 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

which has so often attended those who have had 
the advantages of higher education, has been due 
rather to native ability which the institutions of 
higher education have been successful in select- 
ing and putting into relief. 

It is true that liberal education, as formerly 
carried on, did suggest means, or contribute to 
preparation, for certain callings more than to 
others. It is a common belief that persons with 
secondary or college education turn more natu- 
rally to the clerical, or commercial, than to the 
industrial callings. There is good ground for be- 
lieving that many of the studies designated as 
liberal find their strongest justification in the 
elements which they contribute to professional 
training. From this point of view, it might justi- 
fiably be said that a liberal education is essen- 
tial to certain kinds of vocational success, but a 
more correct interpretation would be that some 
of the so-called liberal studies are in reality vo- 
cational. 

But any discussion of this subject must involve 
a clear recognition of the fact that liberal edu- 
cation primarily has to do with art, music, liter- 
ature, foreign language, history, geography, 
natural science, and social science, from the 
standpoint of the individual as one who is to learn 

73 



THE PROBLEM OF 

to appreciate, on a broad scale, the world in 
which he lives. For most individuals, these 
studies have little or nothing to do with voca- 
tional efficiency, which is something to be at- 
tained by specialized endeavor, and along lines 
determined by its needs. All attempts to make 
the subjects of liberal education yield vocational 
efficiency are destined to fail, because to a large 
extent, such effort will result in depriving them 
of their true significance as factors in a liberal 
education. Even such subjects as mathematics, 
science, and drawing, when pursued in the gen- 
eral sense, may lend themselves only slightly to 
vocational application, especially in view of the 
modern tendency towards specialized production ; 
on the other hand, these subjects may very well 
be pursued for vocational purposes, in which 
case the choice of material and method will be 
controlled mainly by the ends of vocational effi- 
ciency. 

It is clear, however, that the aims of liberal 
education can be to some extent realized through 
the measures adopted for a generous vocational 
education. This result maybe achieved in several 
ways. Vocational pursuits, by drawing upon the 
instincts of construction and upon creative ten- 
dencies, may develop thinking interests and mo- 

74 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

tives in related studies. In practical life, we 
often find this in the active interest which is de- 
veloped in the study of physics by one who has 
become vocationally interested in mechanics, 
electricity, or steam. At the present time, many 
women find their most active motive for the study 
of chemistry in the necessities suggested by in- 
vestigation and practice of the home-keeping 
arts. It is well known that youths and men who 
have made some beginnings in scientific agricul- 
ture, pursue a wide range of studies and reading 
in their endeavor to grasp the principles under- 
lying that subject. Not a few teachers who have 
become devoted to their work find in their pro- 
fessional interests sufficient motives for extensive 
studies into the evolution of educational prac- 
tices. Girls who are studying dressmaking be- 
come interested in the possibilities of color com- 
binations. Economic history becomes especially 
significant to the person who has had some con- 
tact with the commerce of the present time. 
These and many more possible examples suggest 
that the beginnings in vocational study may in- 
spire interests and motives which carry the 
student far over into the field of liberal education, 
with a degree of vital appreciation, which could 
be procured in no other way. 

75 



THE PROBLEM OF 

Again, it frequently happens that a child has 
lost all interest in the more abstract studies of 
the school, and, for him, participation in active 
constructive work may be the means of inspiring 
intellectual activity which, in turn, becomes dis- 
tinctly an aspect of liberal education. Examples 
of this are familiar to all teachers who have had 
to do with vocational education in trade schools, 
reform schools, and business colleges. 

In still another direction, vocational education 
may contribute largely to the aims of liberal edu- 
cation. It has been previously indicated that one 
large factor in liberal education is the socializa- 
tion of the individual ; that is, bringing him into 
sympathetic and perceiving relations with the 
rest of the social life about him. Civic education 
has this as its chief aim, but to a large extent 
morality and civic efficiency rest on economic 
foundations, and for many persons, economic ac- 
tivities are the best approach to the insight here 
suggested. In connection with productive work, 
the virtues of thrift, honest effort, cooperation, 
and the like, can be more successfully imparted. 
It is not improbable that, for a great many boys 
and girls, particularly those not endowed with 
the higher idealism, this, under the right teach- 
ing, may be made the most effective approach 

7 6 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

to an efficient and vital education in" civic re- 
sponsibility. 

Liberal and vocational education are not identi- 
cal, and have only certain elements in common ; 
they aim in essentially different directions, and 
their valid aims can be realized only by making 
allowance for this difference. On the other hand, 
some of the studies which contribute to liberal 
education may be so handled as to give a basis, 
or approach, or means of choice to subsequent 
vocational education. For many persons, a vital 
vocational education, resting on concrete founda- 
tions and making due allowance for expansion 
into the related fields of science, art, history, 
economics, and civics, may become an exceed- 
ingly effective means of liberalizing the minds of 
several types of boys and girls, and especially 
those least capable of abstract thinking or social 
idealism. 

The Types of Schools t 

The question is frequently raised as to the 
distinctions among various types of schools as 
now found. It must be acknowledged that in this 
field great confusion of terminology still pre- 
vails. Among the terms now in use are these : 
manual training school, household arts school, 

77 



% 

* - » 



THE PROBLEM OF 

technical high school, mechanic arts high school, 
industrial high school, manual training high 
school, industrial school, trade school, interme- 
diate industrial school, etc. It will be evident 
that the confusion of terminology with regard to 
these schools rests upon a more fundamental 
confusion as to processes, methods, and aims. 

Manual training, as has been shown, is essen- 
tially part of the scheme of liberal education, in 
spite of the designs of some who were instru- 
mental in introducing it. It has suffered pecul- 
iarly from the psychological fallacy of formal 
discipline. It was long ago seen that the practice 
of many crafts involved, or required, extensive 
motor (mainly hand) training. Therefore, said the 
nai've theorist of the past, let us train the hand. 
But there are scores of kinds of hand-training, 
and the attainment of one kind of dexterity does 
not guarantee another, else would baseball and 
bicycle-riding be most useful forms of manual 
training. To-day we still call a variety of concrete 
work in the grades "manual training," but in 
some quarters, the term " industrial training," or 
" industrial arts," is used by preference. 

Under the head of industrial arts should be in- 
cluded those studies which, employing manual 
and constructive, or other methods, are aimed 

78 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

primarily to give appreciation, taste, and insight, 
but without being designed to secure proficiency 
in vocation. A corresponding range of liberal 
studies would be the household arts, and another, 
the agricultural arts. It is not impossible, indeed, 
that a group of commercial studies, as elements 
in liberal education, could be differentiated in the 
same way. 

It was previously noted that the manual train- 
ing, technical, or mechanic arts high schools origi- 
nally had an implicit vocational purpose, which 
has largely failed of realization. With but few 
exceptions, these schools are essentially con- 
trolled at the present time by the aims of liberal 
education ; in some cases, more of manual train- 
ing is given, and it is not impossible that in time 
some of these schools may develop into true vo- 
cational schools. In few instances, they aim to 
secure a considerable degree of proficiency in the 
technical, as opposed to the practical studies 
attending certain vocations; for example, they 
give the training in mathematics, mechanics, and 
drawing, which might, when coupled with prac- 
tical proficiency, produce a high-grade mechanic. 
Owing, however, to their inversion of the peda- 
gogic order of approach to these studies, which 
is deemed essential to vocational efficiency, it is 

79 



THE PROBLEM OF 

a question whether they can ever be called, in the 
true sense, vocational schools. As far as they are 
vocational, they are so only for a group of occu- 
pations which, like architecture and engineering, 
still involve largely the capacity for abstract 
thinking and organization. 

Trade schools, in large variety, already exist 
in the United States, usually under philanthropic 
or private direction. Commonly, these have well- 
defined, practical aims, and, owing to their cir- 
cumstances, their work commonly functions as 
designed. In a considerable number of instances, 
trade schools, like the apprenticeship system 
which they are designed to replace in whole or in 
part, receive the students at approximately the 
age of sixteen, and give them from six months 
to four years of intensive practical and technical 
training, as preparatory to practical industries. 

Intermediate industrial schools are those de- 
signed to take children at or near fourteen, and 
to give them the beginnings of vocational train- 
ing for groups of related occupations, or for spe- 
cialties. They do not assume to give trade train- 
ing, but a practical preparation therefor. 

A new form of apprenticeship has in recent 
years made extensive progress in American in- 
dustry. In this, the apprentices are put in charge 

80 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

of teachers who supervise their training and guar- 
antee such a conduct of their practical work and 
theoretical studies as will produce wide vocational 
efficiency. The factory or workshop becomes the 
school, time is set apart for theoretical studies, 
and the student is engaged mainly in productive 
work. This form of vocational education may be 
adapted to certain industries, but it is not certain 
that it will be able to assume the disinterested 
attitude of the publicly controlled forms. 

Conclusion 

The demand for vocational education under 
school conditions is a widespread one, and is 
rooted in the social and economic changes of the 
age. Rightly organized, vocational education will 
prove a profitable investment for society. The 
pedagogy of this education will differ widely from 
that evolved for liberal education, and especially 
in respect to making practice, or participation in 
productive work, a fundamental element. Vo- 
cational education must be so conducted as to 
contribute to the making of the citizen, as well 
as the worker. In the course of the development 
of a progressive social economy, we may expect 
it to be made obligatory upon every individual 
to acquire a certain amount of vocational educa- 

81 



VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

tion, just as the present tendency of legislation 
is to prevent any one from remaining illiterate. 
Vocational education is not in conflict with liberal 
education, but is a supplemental form, and may 
be expected to reinforce it. 



OUTLINE 

I. SOME GENERAL DISTINCTIONS 

1. The variety of educational agencies I 

2. Variations in the purposive character of education 2 

3. Variations of educational aims 3 

II. WHAT IS LIBERAL EDUCATION? 

1. Liberal education is for culture and civic capacity. 4 

2. Apparent opposition between liberal and practical 

training 6 

III. WHAT IS VOCATIONAL EDUCATION? 

1. Definition 8 

2. Various agencies contributing to it 10 

3. Partial development in schools 10 

IV. MODERN SOCIAL NEED OF VOCATIONAL 
EDUCATION 

1. The lessening influence of other agencies . . .13 

2. The application of science 15 

V. SHOULD THE STATE SUPPORT VOCA- 
TIONAL EDUCATION? 

1. Development of liberal education under schools . 18 

2. The increasing participation of the State .... 21 

VI. TYPES OF VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

1. Five main types 22 

2. Stages within these types 24 

83 



OUTLINE 

VII. PEDAGOGICAL DIVISIONS OF VOCA- 
TIONAL EDUCATION 

1. Three main stages — the concrete, the technical, 

and the general 26 

2. Illustrations 29 

VIII. THE ORDER AND RELATION OF THE 
PEDAGOGIC STAGES IN VOCATIONAL 

EDUCATION 

1. The concrete character of home and apprenticeship 

teaching 32 

2. The tendency of the school to teach abstract studies 32 

3. The theoretical as growing out of the concrete 

studies . 34 

IX. COOPERATION OF AGENCIES IN VOCA- 

TIONAL EDUCATION 

1. Examples of part time teaching .38 

2. New system of schools may be needed 40 

X. THE RELATION OF VOCATIONAL EDUCA- 
TION TO MANUAL TRAINING 

1. Manual training as liberal education ; as modified 

toward vocational ends ; as combining liberal and 
vocational ends 42 

2. Manual training and vocational education must be 

kept apart 46 

XI. PROBLEMS OF INTERMEDIATE OR IN- 
TRODUCTORY VOCATIONAL EDUCATION 

1. The youth from fourteen to sixteen ...... 47 

2. The effects of the specialization of industry ... 49 

84 



OUTLINE 

XII. THE PROBLEM OF WOMEN IN INDUSTRY 

i. The two kinds of career usually open to each woman 51 
2. Education for wage-earning and for home-mak- 
ing . . . 52 

XIII. THE PROBLEMS OF AGRICULTURAL 
EDUCATION 

1. Improvements 54 

2. Types available $$ 

XIV. THE PROBLEMS OF ADMINISTRATION 

1. The demands for special administration .... 57 

2. Suggested adjustments 59 

XV. MISCELLANEOUS PROBLEMS 

1. A valuable product from work 61 

2. Varieties of courses 62 

3. The making of text-books 64 

4. Regulation of labor supply 64 

XVI. THE SUPPORT OF VOCATIONAL EDU- 
CATION 

1. Its cost 65 

2. The necessity of state aid 66 

3. Its justification as a social investment 67 

XVII. THE TEACHING FORCE 

1. The necessity of practical experience 69 

2. Special professional training 70 

XVIII. THE RELATION OF VOCATIONAL TO 
CULTURAL EDUCATION 

1. Their common elemental ideas of mental training . 71 

2. Possibilities of combining the two forms .... 74 

85 



OUTLINE 

XIX. TYPES OF SCHOOLS 

1. Varieties of types .•...77 

2. Criticisms and definitions 79 

XX. CONCLUSION 

The fundamental character of vocational education 81 



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